“AN ARCHAIC agreement hatched in the air-conditioned suites of a Sydney office block has exposed the kind of chronic mismanagement at government level that is driving local farmers to the point of despair.
“The revelation this week that Snowy Hydro is sending millions of litres of water downstream every day into overflowing dams and flood-affected towns along the Murrumbidgee River has left irrigators dumbfounded.
Read more at Area News.
“At a time when every drop of water irrigators use to grow food and fibre is under intense scrutiny, the sheer waste created by a contract so rigid it gives no consideration to the conditions on the ground is simply staggering.
“Under its operating licence, which was developed in conjunction with the NSW government, Snowy Hydro is permitted to withhold water releases during years of drought.
“But once inflows return to normal levels, as has happened this season, it is bound to pay back that water in the form of daily releases that are set to total about 500,000 megalitres by June next year.
“Debbie Buller from the Murrumbidgee Food and Fibre Association said she was disgusted that so much water could be so frivolously wasted.
‘I’m totally ticked off with these people,’ Mrs Buller said. ‘They have to release this water regardless of downstream conditions, so basically they’re in a position where they can rape and pillage downstream.
‘There’s not one ounce of commonsense in this. I don’t care what their reasons are – and I’m sure being bureaucrats they have thousands of them – it makes no sense to send extra water down rivers that are in flood and into dams that can’t store it.’
“Murrumbidgee MP Adrian Piccoli said he had no doubt the releases were adding to the suffering of flood-ravaged communities.
‘Anybody who looks at this situation logically will see that it’s ridiculous,’ he said.
‘It’s exacerbating the flooding along the Murrumbidgee and this water provides no benefit whatsoever to the environment.’ …
City deal leads to water waste
Area News, BY Ross Tyson
15 Dec, 2010 01:00 AM
Online here: http://www.areanews.com.au/news/local/news/general/city-deal-leads-to-water-waste/2026766.aspx
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
This article tells us bugger-all. All we can see is that some people are upset about what they think are the implications of a deal that is not really explained.It’s just another attempt to exploit city/country conflict. It’s exploiting people in the midst of the stress of a flood.
A figure of 500GL is mentioned,to be distributed over the next six months presumably in the Murrumbidgee catchment. That’s an average 2.8GL/day [that can come from Tantangara as well,so it does not have to all go down via the Tumut]. Sounds like half a years RAR,so it’s not extra water….can you shed some light here? Heat we have,give us some light,Jen.
Let’s look at the stats from the Wagga Wagga gauge,courtesy of NOW,for the month 15/11 to 15/12,and assuming that this is the RAR actually released.
Cumulative flow volume for that period: 1900 GL. Cumulative volume for full official RAR component at 2.8GL/day=84GL. That is 4.42% of what went past Wagga for that 30 day period.
Let’s look at the flood at Wagga: the river was at or above the moderate flood level of 9m for nine days, from late on the 5/12 to early 14/12. In that time about 1,300GL went by. 9 days RAR@ 2.8GL/day =25.2GL. That represents just under 2% of the volume of the Murrumbidgee for that period,and since SH stopped releasing RAR on Wednesday 8/12,the true figure may actually be less than this .
Yet Adrian Piccoli has no doubt this is “…adding to the suffering of flood-ravaged communities.”
Poly do the raw numbers matter? The point I take from these posts is that beurocrats will follow their regulations to the letter regardless of prevailing conditions.
The fact is there are floods down river. Water should not have been released.
I don’t care if that released water contributes 0.01% to the floods, it’s just WRONG.
Commonsense has deserted our policy makers as well as public servants.
Polyaulx,
try this picture. You are in the ocean drowning. I row out to you and pour a cup of fresh water over your head.
Did this action help you? Did it help the environment?
The cup of water may have been helpful if I had saved it until I had you out of the water.
Polyaulax,
To add light to the heat, read your own text above. I had no idea that such a substantial, measurable percentage of flood water might be due to RAR.
Your reflections on “exploitation” are downright peculiar, and, as a rural resident, I can make nothing of them.
Your facts and informed speculations, on the other hand, are very interesting, and point to a flagrant scandal.
Of course, everything now hinges on whether these environmental flows were, in fact, released. Reading between some rather nervous and obfuscatory lines, I’m starting to suspect that the releases did occur.
Polyaulax,
MVFFA agree with Robert, kuhnkat and Baa Humbug that the exact figures do not really matter in this story.
The real issue is that inflexible rules have caused our water authorities to put water down flooded rivers into spilling dams. This is just not right regardless of the amounts.
If it makes you feel any better, MVFFA can confirm that the figures Jennifer uncovered are in the right range.
SHL are not good at releasing exact figures because they can use”commercial in confidence ” legislation.
The figures are obtainable, it is just not easy and, when obtained, people are sometimes unsure whether they are able to publish them.
As we said in another post. Go to this site : http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/lakeLevels.asp?pageID=47&parentID=6&mode=submitted
Then please offer an explanation why, after the best inflows in years (inflows since July have been way above average) that Eucumbene levels are now lower than this time last year?
There is only one possible explanation isn’t there?
The rather dubious excuse offered yesterday about rain falling below the catchment is not acceptable. There have been plenty of rain events all over the catchment plus a higher than average inflow from the snow melt. Since July, there has been plenty of inflows. MVFAA have seen the graphs.
When we read Jennifer’s story, it is this set of figures which caused her to wonder more about what she had been told by SHL.
And Kuhkat,
What an excellent analogy!
Of course the cup of water would be way more useful if you saved it for later. That of course is the whole point!
MVFFA,exact figures DO matter if you don’t like seeing people getting unnecessarily upset.
I have pointed out on another thread that Tantangara is at its highest level since at least 1997,and Jindabyne since 2003. Tantangara is essentially ‘upper Eucumbene’ as you know.This is all water stored for the future.
I don’t think that my point about much of the saturated Tumut catchment being beyond the reach of SHs controlling influence is ‘rather dubious’ or an excuse,I think it is quite certain when you aggregate all the information,and look at where the rain fell. So it comes down to SH and State Waters micro-management of the lower Tumut storage system in the two or three weeks before Blowering spilled,if you’re curious about the flood events. Otherwise the RAR flows,while portrayed to look like wasted water,are not a danger to the flood plain community. How much could SH have realistically held back in Eucumbene and still carried out all its business and obligations? 100GL? 200GL?
This would be an ideal opportunity for SHL to put forward an expert technical explanation of how Eucumbene water is managed in general ,and how it was managed over the last three months. That would be the best possible explanation.
kuhnkat’s analogy has the proportions wrong: you might remember the old country/soul number was called “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man”.This wasn’t achieved with a cup of water….;)
Did it help the environment?.Probably good for the Murrumbidgee [pre-flood],but the Murray and its tributaries have been high or flooding some where for a good while now. 4000GL has gone past Wentworth since the start of the year….and this has happened while dams have been filling everywhere. Wyangala is 88%,not been there since the start of 2001!
Sorry, Polyaulax, but your last entry is just vaguely connected comments, facts and opinions on secondary matters. Impossible to argue, because there is no consistent thread and certainly no relevance to the primary issue.
It’s as if you wanted to spin our attention away from the single issue that has given rise to this discussion. That issue is the release of RAR waters, in any amount whatsoever, at a time of flooding. More particularly, the objection is to releases that could affect, in any degree at all, the major flood area. If this did not happen, my apologies. If it did happen, it’s a scandal.
I’m not familiar with the song you mention, but I’m aware that kuhnkat was analogising and that there was no literal cup of water. I’m astounded that you don’t get our central point, especially since you yourself have named possible percentages of RAR waters in the flooded Murrumbidgee. We’re all aware of “business and obligations”. Our point is that fulfilling one obligation, namely, the release of environmental flows, is scandalous. Regardless of what other purposes were served by the flows, or who is principally responsible, it’s a scandal. If some of these people are friends or associates of yours, I’m sorry. But it’s a scandal.
If you will be clearer in your next entry, I’ll try to address any issues you raise. But please be aware that people are getting mighty tired of spin. It’s so last-decade.
Poly,
For goodness sake, go and check your facts.
Tantangra Dam is on the upper Murrumbidgee, not the Eucumbene as you have claimed here and elsewhere.
Near all of the water collected threin is gravity fed into Eucumbene.
While it may appear that Eucumbene has, relative to its size, a small ctachment, this is irrelevant as Eucumbene is there to store water from several catchments including the Snowy.
Eucumbene has been full several times since its commissioning.
Pikey.
Ron,I have never claimed that Tantangara is on the Eucumbene River. Check my posts.
When I last mentioned it ,I said “it is essentially Upper Eucumbene”….As you say,its role is to feed water by gravity to Eucumbene,so it can be effectively regarded as part of the Eucumbene storage when calculating available water for release. That was my point to MVFFA: when he/she complained about the low level at Eucumbene,I pointed out that Tantangara was higher than at any time since at least 1997,assuming that it was obvious that one usefully counts both storages as one .
Tantangara has gained about 100GL since the start of winter,and since it is ‘Eucumbene by extension’,that is a gain in storage that should be acknowledged amid the gloom. It effectively means Eucumbene is 30% full,not 27.6%. I hope I have made myself clearer.
To Robert,I do understand your central point is to frame these releases as ‘scandalous’. I am tired of hyperbole.
Poly,
You have made yourself as clear as a pea soup fog on a dark night.
Water from Tantangra has been constantly transfered from Tantangra to Eucumbene and then used to produce Hydro power with absolutely NO thought to the effects on next year or following years needs for river flow and all water needs along the Murray and Murrumbidgee.
The facts are that something of the order of 2 to 3 million megalitres of water has been wasted to satisfy the power needs of incompetent State Governments.
Stop playing with minutia and look at the real incompetence that is being played out here.
We have both Politicians and their lackey Bureaucrats both lying and misinforming the public about maladministration of our basic resources.
This is a scandal and obfuscation only hinders a change of attitude.
We have to demand that this nonsense stops and Jennifer has been doing her part.
It is now time for everyone on this blog to start ringing Politicians and demanding that this nonsense stop.
Pikey.
Ron,in this instance,it looks like Tantangara water was mainly being stored look at the lake levels calculator….,and the Eucumbene transfers were in considerable part from western water transferred east over the winter months then sent back. Jen could tell us…:)
Sorry folks, I’m with Polyaulax here. If the RAR is only 2% of the volume then its impact on flood height is substantially less than 2% of the 9 metre flood height. The last 2% is spread over a much wider cross section than the first 2%. So even if the entire channel had vertical sides the RAR would only account for 18cm of flood height. But we know that the flood width will widen substantially as the water level rises. And it will do so in proportion to the slope of the flood plain towards the channel, which in the MIA is sweet FA. If the actual flood surface width was ten times the river width then this RAR would have only lifted flood level by 1.8 cm!!!
Frankly, this whole thread is totally underwhelming. For fox ache, this was the last week before the deadline for submissions on what will happen to 3000GL EACH YEAR of real people’s precious water and this blog was wandering off up a barely relevant blind alley over what some bureaucrats might have done with 7GL/day during two weeks of a one in 50 year flood event. Yes, it might have pressed a few buttons but in the big picture it means absolutely jack $hit.
Hi Admin,
Great reporting – I picked up the story from Jo Nova’s site.
I saw the 1956 floods in the Riverina, only a tacker but still remember it, and have seen the destruction.
I am concerned with the Hume Weir dam wall which, as someone posted on Wikipedia in Lake Hume History,
“Monitoring of the dam in the early 1990s revealed that the water pressure and leakage had caused the dam to move on its foundations slightly, leading to concerns that the dam was heading for collapse, threatening Albury-Wodonga and the entire Murray basin with it. Authorities denied any short-term threat. Traffic was banned from the spillway, and a large repair job commenced involving, in part, the construction of a secondary earth wall behind the original to take the strain.”
That ‘slightly’ movement of the foundation wall is, the last time I saw any figures, was approximately 15 metres.
Have a great Christmas and I hope you can keep up the great work in the new Year.
Kind regards
Denis of Perth